


The Other Side Of Impossible

by Jenwryn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Beginnings, F/M, Genderswap, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-29
Updated: 2010-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-14 05:31:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson, you see, has been ignoring her all morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other Side Of Impossible

**Author's Note:**

> My Sherlock/John titles are getting ever stupider, no doubt because I have the batshit desire to make sure they all start with "The". Yes. This is me, and I am crazy. XD
> 
> Alsooo, this and my other genderswapped!heatwave story were written pretty much at the same time. The scrappy drafts of them, that is. Apparently I'm in a mood to finish writing things, though, so now you can have the other angle, so to speak.

Sherlock has her laptop out and her website up, but the screen is staring rather blandly at her and there aren't any cases, not _any_. At least, none worth her attention. Even after having downgraded her standards rather appallingly.

Criminals are clearly babies, if they're put off so resoundingly by a spot of hot weather.

She shuts the laptop with a slap, and practically flings it to the floor, not really caring whether the motion causes damage or not; it isn't, after all, as though it's the only laptop in the house.

On the television – which John has on low, like he _does_ , presumably just to annoy Sherlock, seeing as he isn't even really watching it – an insipid blonde is whining something about Record Temperatures and Heatwaves Across London.

Sherlock pulls a face, and drags her feet up into her lap. She isn't particularly fond of how slick the skin is, in the dips behind her knees. She's only wearing a t-shirt and knickers, and they're sticking to her horribly. “Bored,” she declares, as she tugs at the cotton, rubbing beneath her right breast, and wonders whether John would actively blow a fuse if she were to take the shirt right off, and toss it behind the sofa where the rest of her clothes have already gone.

John Watson, you see, has been ignoring her all morning.

For five hours, twenty-three minutes, and sixteen seconds, to be precise.

Sherlock stands, and prowls around the room; poking at things restlessly, and staring at the skull – tucked, currently, halfway behind a well-thumbed copy of _Greys Anatomy_ – as though daring it to so much as comment on her attitude. She detours to the kitchen, filling one of John's mugs (a gift from Harry; it has a rather stupid cat on one side) with water from the tap, and gulping it down. Annoyingly listless, she shifts the portable fan to the middle of the sitting room, and then returns to the kitchen for a dish of cool water to place in front of it; she adds ice, from the freezer, and it's not like she cares whether it had originally come from St. Bart's, as packaging for human organs.

“Bored,” Sherlock repeats, then, feeling as though she's more than out-done herself in the Actually Attempting To Be Usefully Around The Flat stakes, flops noisily back onto the sofa. She contemplates, half-heartedly, picking up her laptop again, simply to see, just one more time, if there are any cases going, somewhere significantly colder. Such as Scandinavia. Or Auckland. Preferably interesting ones. Requiring access via aeroplanes with only one seat available, so that she'd be 'forced' to leave John in London. To _swelter_. Just because she can.

And because he's still ignoring her.

Despite the bowl of ice-water, and the fan.

Sherlock scratches behind her knee, then stretches her leg out, toes curled in an aggravated fashion.

She wonders if she were supposed, perhaps, to also offer the man a drink.

Stupid.

“Bored,” she enunciates, loudly and clearly. Waits a beat. The throws a cushion at John's head.

John, the infuriating fellow, barely even glances at her. He certainly doesn't look at her _properly_ , what with his gaze fixed determinedly around her right ear. “God,” he mutters, “go stick your head in the fridge or something, will you?”

Clearly, he doesn't appreciate the hot weather any more than she does.

Not that that is, by any lengths, a valid excuse for ignoring her.

Sherlock moans, loudly and dramatically, as though she's about to start shooting things again. Which she might, actually, if John doesn't quit being such a frustration. He may very well have hidden his gun away (she knows _exactly_ where he's put it, of course, but she's making an _effort_ – not that he's noticed – to try and act like she respects his bizarre need to pretend he has his own special blend of privacy), but there's a rather fit hunting bow, and some arrows, half hidden behind the lines of the tallboy, which she rather suspects the doctor doesn't know about yet.

Admittedly, the flaw in that idea is that reaching the bow would require her to actually stand up again. She stretches out her other leg. This weather; fuck. This weather is so far gone that she seriously doubts even nicotine would help her much. And John is so dreadfully disapproving about anything else.

“BORED,” she reminds the universe, again, just because she can, and because repetition requires very little effort indeed. Also, it makes John's face clench, this time, just a tiny bit, as though he really wants to shout at her, but has decided, for some mysterious John-reason, against that course of action.

John's face is shiny with sweat, despite the rolled-up magazine he's been fanning himself with. He's sucking ice-cubes – ice-cubes that don't come from St. Bart's, just to be clear, but which had been a brought to him by Mrs. Hudson, before their landlady had declared she was planning a many-hours-long cold bath, and _would it be possible for you dears not to cause any more damage while I'm having a little bit of a cool-down_. The keyword 'more' had been directed at Sherlock, with a pointed expression that was no doubt supposed to make Sherlock feel rueful about the mess she'd made in the hallway, the night before – the experiment had centred around four balloons, three antiquated eggs, and a candle – and it hadn't, for the record, been a _mess_. And she doesn't feel in the least bit guilty about it, either.

Sherlock looks at the way John's mouth sucks on the ice, and she looks at the way John moves his knees a little further apart, as the heat gets to him more and more.

“Sherlock,” John says, quietly, and then goes back to not-watching the television in a very annoying kind of way.

What's the _point_ of the man, if he doesn't pay her at least a little attention?

Well, apart from all the obvious answers to that question, of course.

Truth be told, Sherlock does rather like John, and she can't – if she were forced, by some annoying person (for example, Mycroft), to consider the matter – really remember, at least with any degree of genuine pleasure, what life had been like before John. Before John, and his imaginary aches, and his genuine aches, and his not-quite-as-stupid-as-everyone-else-ness, and those glances of admiration he gifts her with, when he knows she's looking; and the even better looks, when he thinks that she isn't.

Of course, the fact that the doctor does, still, seem to be under the misguided impression that he can actually _get_ a look at her, without her being aware of it, does rather mark one down against his intellect.

Nevertheless, she likes him.

She _really_ doesn't like this weather, though. She groans, dramatically, and shakes her hair like a soaked puppy.

“Bloody hell, Sherlock,” John splutters. Finally, finally he looks at her almost-properly, albeit with a peevish set to his mouth. Her hair, it would seem, had flicked sweat onto his face.

She grins at him, hugely.

He wipes at his forehead with the back of his hand.

He says, “That just – did you really have to do that? I'm gross enough as it is.”

Sherlock really doesn't think he is gross, actually; quite likes the sight of him. It makes her think of long days spent racing through back alleys and down main roads, when he keeps up with her like nobody else has much bothered to do before, and he's always there, even when she gets distracted and forgets about him.

Sherlock _likes_ him, a bit flushed and pink and sweaty. It's a good look, because it's almost only ever caused by her.

At least, until this rotten weather.

“I hate this,” she announces to him, and to the wallpaper, and to the clouds outside (John knows the names of all the clouds, which Sherlock finds intriguing – not the names themselves, for they have very little relevance to the world – but the fact that he knows them). She's gratified to finally have his attention, though, even just a bit, and so she pouts.

John snorts, and starts reading the back page of the magazine. Sherlock can see the paper of it sticking to the skin of his thighs. John's wearing shorts, and it's the first time she's ever seen him in them, and she thinks they're hilarious, because men's legs just are, in that mens'-legs kind of way.

That he is dismissing her again isn't so hilarious, however.

Which is probably why Sherlock stands up, swoops one of his ice-cubes into her fingers, and drops it down the back of his shirt.

“Sherlock!” he squeaks, startled, but he's staring up at her, _properly staring up at her_ , in the way he's been denying her all morning. She can feel his gaze; can tell the moment when his outrage slips, almost accidentally, sideways, into something much more muted, something much more intriguing; something that catches beneath Sherlock's bellybutton, in a way she's grown rather fond of.

Because she likes him.

And because she has his attention now, and she can feel it, when he loses all pretence of crossness, and finally lets his eyes gaze where he's been refusing them; finally lets his vision wander her legs, slide up, along, over the cotton clinging damply to her breasts. He looks at her face, and his eyes are for her and her alone.

He sighs, and puts the magazine to one side.

“Hello,” she says, just because she can, and because he won't expect it from her. She slips onto his lap, hot, her thighs to either side of his, and the hair of his legs rough against her.

And John Watson, his face showing surprise only at the absence of surprise, runs his tongue across his lip, slow and cautious, smiles like a man handed the pin of a grenade, and says, ever so slowly, “Hello, Sherlock.”

His hand, on her face, makes a different kind of heat, but Sherlock doesn't mind.


End file.
